Medication should be the last resort when dealing with this kind of issues.
It sounds like the real problem here is anxiety - you're constantly cripplingly afraid. If your therapist hasn't suggested anti-anxiety medications and started you on calming techniques or cognitive behavior therapy style tactics, they're doing you a real disservice.
Anti-anxiety meds are the last thing you want. Last resort only.
Calming techniques, cognitive behaviour therapy, mindfullness are all things that could possibly help though.
Anti-anxiety meds like Xanax and its ilk are indeed to only be used as a last resort, as they can have some mean side effects and can be habit-forming.
Can I ask why the powerful negative response to meds? I'm not judging, I'm just unclear as to whether this originates out of something specific. Kagus might have given the answer, but it still seems like an unusually unified reaction against meds.
For what it's worth, the one time I was on Prozac (which didn't help all that much... unless it did. There are some good reasons to be unsure as to what effect Prozac actually had on me, due to unusual circumstances at the time), I remember that my sleep was
significantly improved. By like, a lot. Ever since I was a little kid, it's always taken me fucking forever to fall asleep: 30 minutes is the
minimum, it only goes
up from there. And that's 30 solid minutes of lying in bed, trying to trick my body into thinking its already asleep, doing literally nothing. But pretty much the only positive effect I did notice off of Prozac was that time was cut down dramatically, down to like a few minutes. It was amazing, and it's not something that pure sleep medicine has helped me with (note: I've only used over-the-counter stuff for sleep). So I mean, if for no other reason than that I'm open to the idea of
some sort of medication.
Yup, there are lots of medications to handle various aspects of anxiety that aren't Xanax. Another option is blood pressure lowering medications, which I was on for a while. And sometimes even Xanax is worth it, if the situation is serious enough.
I actually have
low blood pressure as it is, funnily enough. I only really get into an actual panic on very, very rare occasions, as usually I'm not in situations that would provoke it. Most of the time my anxiety manifests as avoidance.
It's really common to be more comfortable if you know someone at an event. I made a point to try and work up to asking people to go with me to things, which helped a lot. The trick is to find events that will interest other people. I'm bad at guessing that.
I am too, but I also don't ask people to go anywhere in the first place, so.
I hear you about the social inertia problem. I eventually decided the only way to handle it was to systematically build up experiences with common social situations. If I had a plan and a goal it was easier to force myself to spend a little time doing new things and going to new places. The only way to get comfortable with new things was to build up comfort and familiarity with those things. It was rough, and there's still some things I'm never going to do, but I can have 50% of a normal social life now and I'm OK with that.
I worry about this a bit. It bothers how much so many of my problems boil down to catch-22 situations where the solution is to do something that is precisely what I have trouble doing. Still, thanks.
I let my teacher know of this last week that I'm worried about my group not pulling through, but I think he's done being merciful (he's helped me out all semester because I've been struggling with Object Oriented Programming).
But this isn't about mercy, this is clearly about group partners not pulling their weight. I can't imagine a teacher who assigns group projects doesn't have a system for handling a situation where some partners aren't doing their work.
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 8572747 times)